by Selena Scott
He just blinked at her, having absolutely no clue what the hell she was talking about.
She blinked back at him, seeming to be waiting for a reaction of some kind, and when she got none, she just sighed and leaned against the next chair over. “What can I do you for? You don’t need another trim or shave.” She leaned forward and inspected his beard, pushing his chin brusquely from one side to the other.
“I’m here because I need help with something they can’t help me with at the center.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Look, I don’t know who told you what, but just because he’s my brother doesn’t mean I sell that shit around here.”
To his complete mystification, Wren was standing up and stalking away. He crutched after her, catching her right before she stalked out of the room.
“I don’t know who your brother is or what he does. I just thought because you know Ida so well …”
Wren turned back around, her eyes narrowed, her arms crossed, looking all kinds of tough. “What’s this got to do with Ida?”
“Well, I want to be a good boyfriend to her and—”
“PAUSE.” Wren held up a bossy hand. “Rewind. Play it back.”
“What?”
Jeez, this woman was hard to communicate with. He’d already said about nine times as many words as he wanted to say and he still hadn’t asked for what he’d come for.
“You’re telling me that you’re Ida’s boyfriend now?” Wren put her hands on her hips. “And that little bish didn’t think to call up and notify me?”
“No.” Phoenix had no idea what a bish was, but he didn’t care for the tone. “I’m not her boyfriend. But I want to ask her if I can be. And when I talked to Diana about it, she told me that there were some things I would probably want to get in order first.”
“Diana her boss? You asked her boss for advice on how to be Ida’s boyfriend?” Her eyebrows were almost disappeared into her hairline and for the first time, Phoenix noticed that they were a nice, black color, not purple at all.
“No,” he shook his head. “I’m not a complete idiot. I know that me and Ida kissing might mean that Ida would lose her job. So, I just asked Diana advice on how to be a good boyfriend in general. Not Ida’s boyfriend.”
Wren studied him with what looked almost like a perverse fascination. “And what did she say?”
“A bunch of stuff. Most of which I’m not worried about—”
“Like what?” Wren demanded.
“Like being kind and a good listener and being respectful and patient and affectionate.”
“You’re not worried about any of that?”
“No,” he shook his head. He really wished they were having this conversation sitting down because his injury was starting to flare, but he’d be damned if he was the one to suggest it. “That’s the easy part. All of that comes naturally to me.”
Wren eyed him, a touch of suspicion in her gaze. “Riiiight.”
“The part I’m worried about is the other stuff.” Finally, he couldn’t stand for another second and crutched over to one of her fancy haircutting chairs and plunked down. She floated after him, apparently too fascinated by this conversation to continue storming out the way she’d started to a while before.
“Other stuff?”
“Yeah. Diana mentioned that having a steady job and a clean place to live are things that good boyfriends usually have. That my situation should, ideally, make Ida’s situation more steady. Not less steady.” He ran a frustrated hand over the top of his head. “I don’t have those things. I like her house. A lot. I’d spend all my time there if I could, but Diana said that was, um, what was the word? Moofing?”
Wren looked like she was swallowing a smile. “Mooching. She’s right. It’s not cool to spend all your time at your girlfriend’s house if you’re not paying rent. And you can only pay rent if you’re invited to pay rent, which if you haven’t asked her to be your girlfriend yet, you’re still a really long way away from.”
“Right.” He nodded. “But I live in this shithole where the government sticks all the shifters. It’s dirty and sad and I don’t want to bring her there. But I don’t want to be a mooch either. Also, I want to see her all the time.”
“Hence the housing dilemma.”
“Also, I don’t have any money. So I can’t exactly pay for someplace nicer.”
“And somehow you thought I could help you with this?”
He frowned. “Well, Diana said that she could only help me in an official capacity, but I don’t want any more government subsidized housing. And I don’t exactly know very many other people. And I wanted help from someone who knows Ida. So. Yeah. Here I am.”
Wren clicked her tongue and studied him. “You need a nicer place to live, but don’t have money. Can you get a job?”
Phoenix held her eye contact, sensing that it was important not to show a weakness at this particular moment. Ravens were technically scavengers, but she certainly put out a predatory vibe. “I haven’t tried yet. Honestly, I wouldn’t know where to start. But Diana said that she might have an idea of a job I could have if I came back next week to the center.”
“Okay…” Wren straightened up and paced around a little bit. “And what are you looking for in a place to live?”
Phoenix shrugged, relieved that they were actually getting somewhere in this conversation. They weren’t going in circles like they were before. “I’m not picky. Clean, I guess. Somewhere that Ida would like to be.”
Wren turned and eyed him, tapping one finger over her lips and cocking her head to one side. “You really like her, huh?”
He furrowed his brow. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Apparently his answer was satisfying to Wren because her face lost a bit of its skeptical angle. “Yeah. They do.” She eyed him some more. Up and down. “You’re kind of a scary dude, you know?”
He twisted his lips in chagrin. “Yeah. I’m learning that. I was going to have Ida help me figure out how to be more, I don’t know, un-scary.”
“No, no, no!” Wren waved her hands in the air. “That’s not what I meant. As far as I’m concerned, never change. Your scariness could solve a problem for both of us, actually.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come upstairs. I’ll show you.”
***
This time, it was Ida who was barging in on Phoenix. He whirled around when she nearly kicked his door off the hinges.
“You quit the center?” Ida hissed, practically steaming from the mouth.
“Hi,” he said, maddeningly calm. He grabbed his crutches and came over to where she was standing. “Can I kiss you?”
“What?! No, you lunatic!” She threw her hands up in the air and paced around for a minute. “What the hell is going on? I go to the center for a noon appointment and there’s Diana, handing me papers to sign about your departure from the center. She was surprised that I didn’t know already! But not as surprised as I am that I didn’t freaking know! She said that I should probably talk to you about it! Which means that you and my boss both know the reason, but I don’t know the reason!”
She had plenty more to say, but as she looked around, her hands on her hips, she finally got a load of what Phoenix was doing.
“Are you packing your things?”
“Yes,” he nodded.
“Why?” she asked weakly, wondering if she even wanted to know the answer. She was kind of on a drama overload right now.
“Because I’m moving. So are Orion and Dawn.”
“They’re placing you in different government housing?”
“Nope,” Phoenix shook his head. “Wren is letting us come live in the fancy cake house.”
“The fancy cake … what?”
“Oh. That’s just what I call the place where her hair salon is. She taught me that word today. Salon. I call her place the cake house because it looks like a cake. Anyways, she’s had some trouble with her brother breaking in and doing bad stuff, I guess. So she said that I could live the
re for free in one of the bedrooms upstairs if I didn’t mind scaring the crap out of him whenever he broke in. Which sounds really easy. And then when she showed me the upstairs, I saw that there’s a ton of extra bedrooms and I asked if Dawn and Orion could come with me. She said the more if you marry her. Or something.”
“The more the merrier,” Ida said weakly. “It’s an expression.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “So, let me get this straight, it’s only three in the afternoon and somehow, already today you’ve talked with Diana, quit the center, arranged for new -free- housing with my best friend, and now you’re moving?”
He nodded and she just kind of ker-plunked down onto the little twin bed. Wow. He’d gotten more done in one day than she had in two weeks of mentoring him. Maybe she should get fired from her job. Apparently she wasn’t very good at it. At least where Phoenix was concerned.
“Don’t sit there,” he said softly, drawing her up from the bed. “This whole thing is because I don’t want to see you in this shitty place. I want to see you in a nice place. Like Wren’s house. It’s fancy. And clean. And you can spend as much time there as you want and I won’t consider it mooching.”
“I … what?” She went to sit again but he held her up, that strong arm banded around her again, just like last night.
“Come see it.”
“Wren’s house? I’ve been there a million times.”
“Yes, but now it’s my house too. Come see the house with me.”
How had she ever thought of his eyes as dead? Because those babies were burning right now, burning with something she didn’t understand and was too afraid to identify.
“Phoenix, please, just tell me what all this is about.”
The man had already turned her world upside down with the kiss of a lifetime and now this?
She had gone to the center at noon, not for an appointment with a client, but for an appointment with Diana. After tossing and turning all night, Ida had deemed herself unfit to be a mentor. She’d kissed a client for god sakes. How unprofessional was that?! She’d written up her letter of resignation, cried a whole lot, taken a shower, and headed to the center like she was heading down to the river Styx, resigning herself to passing through to the other side. This job meant so freaking much to her. It was her connection to—
No. She’d made sure not to think of her brother as she’d marched into Diana’s office and attempted to hand over her letter of resignation. Diana, however, hadn’t even glanced at the letter. She’d just shoved it back into Ida’s hands, wrinkling it irrevocably. She’d handed over papers of her own. Papers which had thoroughly discombobulated Ida.
“Phoenix is quitting?” she’d asked dimly, a hundred horrifying scenarios running through her head. All of them basically accumulating into one vision, in which he felt extremely violated by her actions and decided that he couldn’t even be at the same center as she was.
But Diana had been smiling at her. “He sure is. Seems that he wants to focus his attentions in, um, another direction.”
What the hell did that mean?”
“Diana, I—”
“Wait.” Diana had raised her palm. “Before you say something that I can’t unhear, please just know that clients leave the center all the time, and rarely for good reasons. So, as much as it pained me to lose Phoenix this morning, it was also a joy to hear that it was for a happy reason.”
Ida scrambled to catch up. “Phoenix seemed happy when he decided to leave the center?”
Diana frowned, seeming to realize that Ida had absolutely no clue what was going on. “Uh. As happy as Phoenix can be, I suppose.”
“And what was his reason for departure?” Ida asked weakly, not sure if she even wanted to hear it.
Diana perked back up. “He specifically stated that there was no reason.”
Ida frowned. “And you just let him leave?” That was a distinctly un-Diana-like move.
“After a brief conversation, in which no dramatic information was revealed, yes, I let Phoenix walk out of here completely unaffiliated with the center. A free man. Free to do, ah, whatever he’d like.”
There had been something in Diana’s tone that had seemed an awful lot like she’d been implying that Phoenix could walk out of there and do whomever he liked, not just whatever he liked. But that couldn’t be right. Her professional boss never made sexual innuendo. And she’d never encourage an employee to date a client, even a former client. Right? Right?!
Ida had left the office thoroughly confused, but with her job still intact. Diana had insisted that if she had more questions, then Phoenix should be the one to answer them.
So, here she was. Standing in his apartment, chest to chest with him, receiving no answers.
“I’ll tell you in a week,” Phoenix promised. “I’ll tell you everything. There’s still some stuff I have to get worked out. But in the meantime, can we leave this dump?”
“Knock knock.”
Ida turned at the familiar voice, blinking as she saw Wren standing in Phoenix’s doorway swinging keys around her finger, Ida’s worlds colliding.
“Wow, this place really is a shithole,” Wren said, tipping up her mirrored aviators to get a better look around. “Need a hand with that bag?”
Apparently all that Phoenix was taking could fit into an athletic duffel that he was attempting to hoist over one shoulder while balancing his crutches.
“Sure,” Phoenix said, to Ida’s great surprise. He wasn’t exactly good at admitting his need for help, but there he was, handing over his life’s possessions to Wren.
“I already got Orion and Dawn loaded up, so we’re just waiting for you, boss.” And then Wren was gone from the doorway.
“Wren is giving you and your siblings a ride over to the salon. Where you live now.” She tried to make it all make sense in her head.
Ida knew all about Wren’s trouble with her brother. The cake house had been given to Wren by their grandmother right before she’d passed. Wren and her brother Sid had been raised in that house. Sid had always felt like it should have been given to him, seeing as he was older than Wren. But Sid had nefarious plans for it, no doubt planning on turning it into a meth lab or something. Ever since Wren had renovated the first floor, transforming it into a hair salon, he’d been lurking around, popping up every now and then crashing for a night here or there, inviting losers over to get wasted in the bedrooms upstairs.
Ida always thought that Wren should call the cops on Sid and be done with it. But she also knew how complicated a relationship with a brother could really be. In a way, having a little hired muscle occupying the bedrooms upstairs was a brilliant idea. No one was using the bedrooms anyways, and this way Wren wouldn’t have to worry that her place of business was going to be trashed by her deadbeat brother.
“Yes,” Phoenix said, stepping into her space again. “Come see it,” he repeated.
“I can’t,” she replied dimly. “I have a client appointment in half an hour. Work. I can’t come.”
“Okay.” He gently untangled a lock of her hair from the arm of her glasses. “Then maybe tonight? Maybe you’ll come see it tonight?”
“Phoenix, you quit the center.” It wasn’t until she was standing here, awash in his wild scent, avoiding his dark gaze, that she really experienced just how freaked out all of this made her. “I’m not your mentor anymore.”
“Exactly,” he murmured. “Ida, come over tonight.” His voice was firm and bossy and brooked no argument. “Or invite me to your house. I don’t care.”
“Oh, jeez.” Her mind was spinning. “All right. I’ll see you later tonight.”
She was momentarily stunned by the sight of his wolfish teeth, the unexpected light in his eyes. He looked … excited.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
So, at eight o’clock that night, Ida padded up the familiar staircase of Wren’s childhood home. Only this time she wasn’t headed up there for a pizza/sour candy sleepover. No. This was to check in on her former client who’d kisse
d her brains out of her ears last night.
What a world.
“Phoenix?” she called, not sure which bedroom he’d chosen. There were three floors above the salon.
A door creaked open and a solitary dark eye peeked out. “He’s on that end of the hallway,” Dawn whispered before closing the door.
Of course he would be. If it really was his job to scare the wits out of Sid if and when he showed up, then Phoenix would want to be over there, nearest the entrance and exit.
Wow. This was all really happening.
Ida took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” Phoenix called.
She pushed open the door and blinked at what she saw. Phoenix was laying on a queen sized bed, looking even larger in his state of relaxation. His crutches were propped up on the wall and his hands were behind his head. He was peering backwards, out the window, toward the gibbous moon. He turned his head when she came in.
“Oh,” he sat up. “I thought you might be Wren. I would have come down to get you if I’d known you were here.”
He held out a hand to her, beckoning her closer to him. There was plenty of room on the bed, but she opted for sanity and chose the desk chair instead. As she sat, she took a minute to look around. This room had always been a guest room, even when Wren’s grandmother had lived here, but it looked a bit different than Ida remembered.
The bedding was dark and looked soft. There was a large photograph of a misty-early sunrise over a mountain that she’d never seen before. A few utilitarian lamps that didn’t look anything like Wren’s grandmother’s style, and a blunt desk. The closet door was open and Phoenix’s clothes hung there, barely taking up a quarter of the space.
“Wren took us to the mall,” Phoenix said, his eyes on her face, interpreting her reactions. “She let us pick out stuff we’d like for our rooms and said we could pay her back when we got jobs.”
Ida blinked. She’d have to take this up with Wren. Her friend must have known that there was no way these three wolves were getting jobs anytime soon. The free rent she could kind of understand, considering the house needed to be protected and Wren didn’t want to stay here. But all the stuff? If Wren had decked out the other two’s rooms like this, then she’d easily spent over a grand. Oy.